RE: If you made the VMs, ...
Linda > 23-09-2020, 05:32 AM
If it were me, set in that timeframe, it would be a secret copy of my notes from reading books (and/or herbaria, atlases, rutters, etc.) that i had borrowed or come upon that i had the opportunity to have been alone with for some time. (In university, my way of studying was to summarize textbooks or lectures on the topics within on the fly leaves so that was all i needed to study come exam time.) First i would boil it down to the basics. it could be the essence of a lifetime's worth of reading or experience. Perhaps some of it was read to me and i took notes in my own shorthand (not me, but just imagining possibilities). The copying would have had to be done in such a way as the owners of the books, or anyone else for that matter, would not know that i carry around copies of their possessions (i didn't know about Roger Bacon's first rule until you said, but it does seem that ambiguity is key, or why would we have so many versions of what is going on with this manuscript). And yet they would be ever useful to me in recreating the information at a later date, either for myself, or perhaps for others also. Someone could take my dictation and obtain the original, or at least an abridged version (being perhaps my own summaries thereof). The drawings would be chock full of visual mnemonic information that i could use to not only recreate the original visual information, but which incorporated scads of detail to go along with it, such as an accompanying narrative, references to further reading, tables of data, or further layers to the drawings.
This summer i gardened, with 10 kinds of tomatoes plus various varieties that came from multiples of each as they were mostly hybrids. I have names for some of the standouts, like monkey balls, and butterscotch. They remind me of a shape for one, the colour accent of another, but i could tell you all the other attributes of each also from the association of the prominent one (to me). I could probably fill multiple notebooks with my descriptions of them all, but I could also probably draw up a single page of memory devices for each kind i grew this year, and be able to draw or paint the originals 20 years from now by looking at that page. I could probably add to that already random looking group of drawings some details that would remind me which was the biggest, the sweetest, the darkest, more details about the shapes, had a point, had a dimple, ripened early, produced well, etc. All that on one page to describe 50 different tomato plants and everything i found to be important about them, and no one would have any idea what it was, because it came from my perception of traits that have been experienced only by me and possibly a few of those i have shared the tomatoes with in some way, traits that might not even be noticed by others, much less thought of in the same way. One way i might combine them would be by original tomato type, so maybe 10 nymphs with various attributes (poses) and/ or brandishments, or one plant with slight differences in the fruit of each branch, if i were to use similar drawings to express my tomato season results. In either case, one page to capture several notebooks worth of info that i could still spew out from looking at the little stand in reminder drawings.
Unlike JKP's ornate always wanting to add more attempt, i think mine would resemble the vms more, the simplicity is built into the boiling down process, there is nothing more to add, it is already all there, the essence of the important.
The danger, of course, is the loss of that original perception, of the one(s) who can translate it. Think of someone trying to decipher my tomato mnemonics without me to explain in English what each visual meant or stood for, or even the topic of the page.